


Bait 'n Switch

by shipcat



Series: Naruto Event Work [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Floating cities are called bubbles, Gen, M/M, Magic-Users, Post-Apocalypse, Siren!Sasori, The world is completely flooded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipcat/pseuds/shipcat
Summary: City funds? Low. Desperation? Running high.But Gaara and Company have a plot. Said plot involves sticking their necks out for a siren, and breaking a heart (or two).♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡They didn’t tell him how it would sound. The song of a siren. It is—It’s barnacled arms crawling up the boat, around the figurehead. It’s algae frothing up from the seabed,  water surface boiling red, it is—It’s honey in his ears, dripping. A man who looks like him, with eyes of flotsam and a sleepy, distant voice. Fingers down his throat, down his chest—no, around—peeling him away from the spokes of the Captain’s wheel and into himself, it is—... an embrace. It’s an embrace. Shoulders around him, red hair tucked under his chin, salt soaked mouth on his skin, murmuring what he’s always wanted to hear.“You are not alone.” The siren says, all he hears. Not Kankuro yelling, or Temari bracing herself. There is only him and Sasori no Akaume, the Scorpion of the Red Sea, flush against his wetsuit. Tan where Gaara is pale.“You are loved,” Sasori continues. Gaara watches incredulously, fist tight at his side.Hold your fire.





	Bait 'n Switch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WrithingBeneathYou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/gifts).



> **Prompts:** "Hold Your Fire" for WBY and "Alchemic Arrays," for Naruto Magic Week. Late submissions end today!

They had warned him of the craggy passes, between Gyaki and Isobu. They had cautioned him of those spots where the oceans go flat, where wind gods refuse to go, except when dragged kicking and screaming. They had pleaded that he stay far away from the Iwan shores, long cursed to infertility and despair. Never mind that, in this world, it was the only land left.

They had not told him about the beautiful things he would find. Gold, springing free of the wooden breasts of sunken ships. Crowns, coins, and kingly things, tucked away in the captain’s quarters and covered with corals. Paintings of nobles covered by swaths of algae. The seaplant sways as Kankuro swims by, picking up sunken treasure with thick gloves. He winks back at his brother through thick diving goggles, wiggling a gem-encrusted codpiece. 

Gaara stares.

Perhaps he’s better off not knowing these things. 

“You got no eye for beauty, bro,” Kankurou tells him with a wink. Gaara ignores him, swinging up into the rigging of their ship, and over the railing. He pauses to watch his face settle in the seawater flung over their rune-cut deck. A monster stares back at him.

“Yo!” It scatters. Kankurou crashes next to him, “Are you deaf? I said, you wouldn't know art if it smacked you upside the hea—“

“I heard you,” Gaara coolly replies, crossing his arms. The horizon looms before them, dark waters flat and glassy. “We have to go.”

“Ah?”

“We’re leaving. Put the loot away.” 

Kankurou makes to protest.

“ _ Now _ .”

A blonde woman drops from the crows nest, swinging from rig to rig before landing next to Kankurou and shoving him into the alchemic circle. “There are beasts about,” she sternly says, prompting Kankurou to scoff. “No treasure is worth more than your life,” she continues. 

“If we don’t get this,” he holds up the codpiece. “Back to the fleet—we won’t be the only ones that die.”

She stares at it mournfully. “You are the worst scavenger.”

“Worst?” Kankurou says, lilting, “or unappreciated genius?—no, listen, do you know how much those bubbleheads will pay for relikink?”

“I do, and I don’t care. Just—please. Keep it out of my face, okay?” She shoves him again, taking her position at the stern of the craft. Gaara takes his at the wheel.

“Temari,” he starts. A grumbling Kankurou hurries to stuff the loot in the cargo hold.

“Aye, Captain?” She lifts a cyclops-sized fan without further fuss. Ink crawls over its folds, the same arcane character repeated over and over again.

Wind. Wind. Wind.

“On my signal.”

“Aye.”

Before her, the sail droops heavily, emptied of any air current. Kankurou swaggers onto the deck, popping in ear plugs as he goes. Gaara and Temari follow suit.

They had told him of this green ocean, untouched and ripe for the picking. They had told him that it once held the first floating city-nation, Atlantis, how it had fallen to a sea scorpion, and that the wave froth sometimes turned red. They had told him to fear his hearing, most of all, and to not listen to the screams and songs that lured men into dark keeps. These are uncharted waters for a reason. 

They have adapted. A three-person vessel means less ears and less danger, sea sponge ear plugs muting the world at large. These measures won’t do much to protect them in the long run, but they’re something. It’s all he can ask for, in the end.

Gaara feels it moving.

The siren.

He closes his eyes and he can see it. Fins shift. Clouds of sand billow over the ocean floor. Spindly limbs dart over rocks and coral, clambering over each other, careening towards their hull. His hull. The only body in these waters. 

There. To the starboard bow.

A ripple. Two.

Tension meanders down their spines, turning flesh to stone and legs to pillars. Kankurou at the runes, glowing. Temari, blond hair splayed behind her, jumping with sparks of magic. Gaara at the helm. 

He raises two fingers, knuckles together, slowly curling them in, nails to palm.  _ Hold your fire.  _ Their sister nods, fan at the ready. His eyes narrow. The ocean stills. 

One twitch, then they’re off to the nearest bubble. 

One movement. Just one. 

That’s all he needs. 

One.

They didn’t tell him how it would sound. The song of a siren. It is—

It’s barnacled arms crawling up the boat, around the figurehead. It’s algae frothing up from the seabed, surface boiling red, it is—

It’s honey in his ears, dripping. A man who looks like him, with eyes of flotsam and a sleepy, distant voice. Fingers down his throat, down his chest—no, around—peeling him away from the spokes of the Captain’s wheel and into himself, it is—

... an embrace. It’s an embrace. Shoulders around him, red hair tucked under his chin, salt soaked mouth on his skin, murmuring what he’s always wanted to hear.

_ “You are not alone.”  _ The siren says, all he hears. Not Kankuro yelling, or Temari bracing herself. There is only him and Sasori no Akaume, the Scorpion of the Red Sea, flush against his wetsuit. Tan where Gaara is pale. 

_ “You are loved,”  _ Sasori continues. Gaara watches incredulously, fist tight at his side.  _ Hold your fire. _

Wood moans as water piles onto the ship, moaning under the siren’s collection. It is an island of its own right, flesh fused to coral and plankton both, forming a hulking, twisted shape, with crooning mouths all over. A leviathan tail rattles behind him, segmented, curled up into the air and ending in a razor sharp barb. Giant red claws clamp onto rails, creaking, stinger looming near their sail. 

_ ”You are loved,” _ the siren repeats. The rigging snaps. His siblings tense. A wet nose nuzzles the crook of Gaara’s neck and ear. Clammy, as expected, though cold for the tropics. It grows icier still as the siren settles around him, human torso deceptively thin, misleadingly flushed, daringly close. He’s colored like a venomous thing - from the red of his hair, the caramel planes of his skin, all the way down to the bright teal of his finger pads, covered in suckers and firmly adhered to Gaara’s wetsuit. 

He isn’t going anywhere. 

After all, they’ve got Sasori right where they want him.

In a flash, he opens his fist - the signal. Temari slashes her fan, cracking through the air, the ship, and their prey. Sasori lurches away with a yelp, serene face turning violent. 

“You,” he hisses. 

"Me," Gaara calmly replies, unfolding his arms. 

His knuckles pop. The mast sways. He raises his hand, fingers splayed, palm up, wrist trembling, then falling, then rising again.

Their sail shivers. The sea quakes. 

Without warning, sand bursts out of the waves, grabs the snarling Siren, and wretches him free of his collection of bodies. The scorpion tail lashes out as Kankuro slams his hands onto the arrays, grinning at Sasori’s wide-eyed expression.

“What?” His runes flare bright purple, lighting up the sky. “Did you think we would run? After what you did? Do?” He laughs. “Pretty funny, man.”

Sasori only bares his teeth, glaring up. Not at the woman binding him or the man stealing his collection, but at Gaara.

“Give him back,” he hisses. “My shell. Hiruko. He’s  _ mine _ .” Gaara and Temari share a look, rope dangling from the crook of her elbow.

“We aren’t through with you.” She joins them, yanking the siren away from her brother and making quick work of him. “Far from it,” she mutters, pulling the knots tighter. 

“ _ Brat _ ,” he spits, all charm gone. “I’ll kill you.” 

Gaara pauses, taking sea sponge out of his ears. 

_You are loved,_ the siren had said. You are loved. You are loved. What Gaara had always needed to say. He loops them through his mind, standing back as Sasori is gagged and tied to the mast, hair gusting about him in a storm of red, song long gone.

“...shit!” Kankurou hisses. “Shit, shit.”

Above them, the sail sways, dangling in tatters. Sasori only smirks through cloth, still staring at Gaara. His suckered fingers stick and slurp at the wooden deck, viciously, violently.  Victoriously.

Gaara recrosses his arms, pacing. Underfoot, teal blood leaks off the starboard side, tilting dangerously under the weight of Sasori’s repulsive collection. He had known sirens to have monstrous shells… but this  _ Hiruko… _

It has too many familiar faces.

A swish of his wrist and his sand is all it takes to shove the repulsive thing into the brig. The boat rocks up, lurching in the sea, eventually returning to equilibrium. Immediately, Kankurou starts complaining about the shells and seaweed leftover in the siren’s wake: a vain attempt to drown out the lump of dread in their throats.

Sasori was not the only monster in these waters.

For miles and miles, they are the only ones to march, to walk, to speak. Beneath the waves, however, were things with razored fins. Hungry things. Things with nothing to fear but a particularly testy, red-haired siren—one that they had kidnapped, and taken out of commission.

“We got an engine from the last wreck.” Gaara says, mind working fast. 

Temari nods. “We’ll work something out.”

“I’ll handle the siren,” he absently replies. She nods again, then goes to collect a morose Kankurou from an overdramatic monologue.

There’s not much to be handled, admittedly. It’s more warden duty than anything. He sits on a crate, bolted down, resting hand under chin. Grey weighs heavy on his perfect poise, dragging his shoulders into the fathomless abyss. He rubs a thumbnail against his index finger, ears ringing, chest aching. His arms sting with the remembrance of what once was, what he lost. He doesn’t have—the word for it.

Sasori stares ahead, gaze stabbing through Gaara. He growls through the gag, fangs poking out the edges. There is no more softness in his eyes, Gaara notes. No embrace. 

They didn’t tell him it’d hurt this much. To lose a siren’s favor.

But it does. Oh, it does.

**Author's Note:**

> One of my many, many stories that I made for Naruto Magic Week. It turns out that I like writing fantasy AUs, so please, feel free to leave me a request in the comments below~! ♡
> 
> Conversely, feel free to send me an ask on Tumblr [@ThatShipCat](https://thatshipcat.tumblr.com).


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